Weeks after criticisms that it was not doing enough testing for the COVID-19 virus, the government is preparing to expand the number of tests done following expert advice.
Best practice from several of the countries which have had better results tackling the rampaging virus has shown that vigorous testing is critical to containing it and this has also been the advice of the World Health Organisation.
Despite having around 1800 test kits, Guyana has tested just 152 persons while by comparison Barbados has done over 600 tests. Guyana’s Ministry of Public Health has also set narrow criteria for testing including that persons must have had a travel history and shown symptoms of the disease.
Today, the Department of Public Information (DPI) said that the Ministry of Public Health is exploring the use of Rapid Testing as well as the use of medications for COVID-19 patients.
This, it said, followed advice from PAHO during a virtual meeting yesterday between Technical Experts from the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) in Washington DC and top health officials here. Other participants included representatives of private hospitals, the Medical Council of Guyana, the private sector and members of the media.
The technical experts included Dr. Lionel Gresh, a virologist who was in Guyana recently to help build capacity to test for COVID-19 and Dr. Sylvain Aldighieri and Dr. Ludovic Reveiz who focused on the treatment for symptoms of COVID-19 with specific medications.
DPI said that the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine was discussed and it was recommended by PAHO/WHO that this measure not be adopted just yet since scientists are studying the efficacy of both drugs in the treatment of the virus. Instead, health officials were told to continue to treat patients symptomatically.
Dr. Aldighieri said that “As of today (April 9), there is a lack of quality evidence to demonstrate chloroquine and/or hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness in the treatment of COVID-19. Evidence is recently emerging via small studies with sub-optimum methodologies that are conflicting.”
Chloroquine is an anti-malarial drug.
Meanwhile, Dr. Gresh, according to DPI, said that Guyana’s testing capacity can be maximised as the National Public Health Reference Laboratory can process 48 COVID-19 samples on an eight-hour shift.
“We can expand sample collection… the machine is not being fully used… We need to inform our regional hospitals not just GPHC of taking off the samples earlier from persons so that we can begin testing. We can do at least 96 tests (two shifts) a day so it is for us to ramp that up,” Minister of Public Health, Volda Lawrence agreed.
It is unclear why this position was not adopted by Lawrence before.
Lawrence, DPI said, reminded that the Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA) also has a testing machine and staff of the agency are already trained to test for COVID-19.
“I have already spoken to the Minister of Agriculture with regards to that PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) machine at GLDA in terms of how we can utilise it should the need arise.”
It is also unclear why this was not done before since the virus has been present here for weeks.
Meanwhile, PAHO/WHO country representative, Dr. Adu-Krow, who leads the technical support mechanism to the Public Health Ministry said the meeting shed light on the rapid test and why the current molecular testing method is being used.
“From the presentations and the discussions, it’s quite clear that PCR testing can pick up the virus from two days before symptom onsets to more than seven days… It can also detect infection in persons who are asymptomatic (not showing any symptoms) and this is very important,” he explained.
Dr. Adu-Krow stated that another way Guyana can prioritise and maximise its testing capacity is by tackling the human resource gap. Recently, the Public Health Minister announced that they are considering bringing private health facilities onboard to conduct testing for COVID-19. Medical experts have said that this should have already been done by the Ministry.
Six persons have died from the virus here and there have been 37 confirmed cases. There is a belief that both of these figures are understated as there has not been sufficient testing.